Strikers do, is the answer. They must persevere or ask sympathisers at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants to help.

Never mind that these accounts are late – by about 10 years – or that it appears 18 months after the end of the financial year to which it refers. Never mind that Amyas Morse, the comptroller and auditor general, has entered qualification after qualification to the accounts. (He could have entered more. Where, for instance, does WGA recognise UK liabilities to and revenues from the European Union?)

Never mind that the Treasury still has to gets its head around some critical "intra-state" financial flows, for example those between levels of government and between Whitehall and arm's length bodies.

Despite those caveats, the 200 pages of WGA are vital reading, perhaps even more so for those who depend on public spending than for anti-state antagonists.

These accounts are the Treasury's effort to pull together a comprehensive picture of government liabilities and assets and succeeds in painting a fuller picture of the state as a fiscal entity than the national accounts crafted by the Office for National Statistics. Inside the WGA is the value of tanks and munitions and of course, a focal point for the strike, the cost of public service pensions. Including an estimate for the long-run liabilities of the state to its workers for their retirement income pumps the gap between state assets and liabilities up by over £1,000bn or 85% of GDP.

Put that one way: if tomorrow the state walked away from pension commitments to teachers, civil servants and soldiers, we would be in nirvana, the state owing nothing, national debt abolished.

You can put it in a radically different way. But only by seeing the WGA to be distorted. Its intellectual base comes from the international financial reporting standards and they were lifted straight from private sector company auditing. They make no effort, as the small print of the WGA acknowledges, to understand tax, and the state's financially dynamic relationship with citizens. Those pension liabilities stretching into the future ought surely to be matched and balanced by the certainty of tax revenues also stretching into the future.

The WGA says that the UK state ought to be written off as bankrupt because its liabilities exceed sits assets by such a large amount (£1,200bn). But it generously adds that because the state can command tax revenues, it must be treated as a "going concern". Doesn't that also mean that WGA's calculation of core assets and liabilities is deficient?

Accounts have to be signed off by the auditors. But the National Audit Office is not prepared to do that. The C&AG lists his misgivings. They include the small matter of £200bn, which Morse calculates as the surplus value of local government assets over liabilities. These are not included in the accounts because councils are still balancing their books on the basis of the old accounting scheme, not yet IFRS.

In addition, says the C&AG, there is Network Rail, which for no obvious reason is not included in the Treasury's definition of "whole". The universities, too, seem to have gone missing, and any attempt to value research and knowledge generation.

A potentially big item in most corporate accounts is "goodwill", the value of the brand and such intangibles as confidence and trust in a company. How important are such things in the public sphere? Perhaps future versions of the WGA will try to compute them.

For these and other reasons, Margaret Hodge, the chair of the public accounts committee, expressed her misgivings, doubting that these accounts give a "true and fair" view of public sector assets and liabilities. Yet, as she said, the WGA is a landmark. It could become the basis for a much more honest and rigorous debate about spending, taxing and borrowing.

That's why the pickets or their representatives need to read, mark and understand what these accounts do and do not say. They have to be able to say more than that they are worth it because, as nurses or civil servants, they do a worthwhile job. They need to be able to engage with time and with taxation. Is it fair to crystallise the state's future obligations to its staff by sticking the massive sum of £1.2tn on today's balance sheet and if it is, why not also stick in a sum for the potential tax take?

Of course taxation depends on political decisions. They might be easier if taxation shortfalls were more obvious. Helpfully, Morse tells the Treasury to be more up-front about where tax revenues come from, and puts into his commentary a graphic showing how tiny are the streams coming from taxing wealth and inheritance.

This is where the strikers need to engage. Their argument has, ultimately, to be with fellow citizens, especially those who possess assets.

Accounts, including the state's, can be balanced in two ways – by cutting spending or increasing revenues. Large numbers of public sector workers went on strike because of the effects of action on the former. The remedy could be action on the latter, despite George Osborne. A political case has to be made, and public opinion won over. In doing so, these accounts have to be the starting point.